How are Patrick and Charlie doing?

They're both fine.  Patrick is still smitten with the girls, and Charlie mostly follows his lead.  His adjustment issues at first seem to have died down; he's no longer being contrary just for the sheer hell of it.  (Patrick, on the other hand, is exactly as contrary as he always was.)

We made an odd discovery recently.  We think Charlie may have a photographic memory for certain things.  The way we know this is that he's constantly telling us what people were wearing at significant moments.  He's recently been very focused on clothing, particularly men's clothing, and he's especially interested in belts -- who wears them, and when.  As another example, he told me what shirt I was wearing when we picked Patrick up from camp months before.

And then today he asked whether it was okay to wear a tie with a short-sleeved shirt.

As we all know, a truthful answer to this question is complicated.  Some people do, but it's not exactly something I would encourage -- "live and let live" is my motto.  But I answered "no," for simplicity's sake, and to explain why he would never catch me wearing one.  His response was, "The man in 'Rio' wears a tie with a short sleeved shirt."  And so he does.  (Fast forward to 3:44 if you can't stand '80s music videos.)

We're currently looking for ways to capitalize upon this skill.  Maybe he'll grow up to be the first person kicked off "Project Runway" for plagiarism.

Can you recommend a good car seat for twins?

I was just about to ask you the same question, because the answer on this end is "no."

The car seats on which we had blown hot and cold are severely in the "cold" column right now. I don't want to bore you with the details, but then again, if you've been following this blog you clearly have some time on your hands, so here goes.

We selected a stroller and infant carrier combination on the basis that the stroller was the "Twin Sport" and was labeled as "Compatible with the Combi Shuttle." However, you find out when you read the manual (conveniently located inside the box) that this particular stroller is compatible with one Combi Shuttle, not two. The side-by-side stroller configuration is designed not to accommodate two infant carriers, which seems to belie the "Twin" nomenclature.

Never fear, say we, we'll just install the car seats into a universal infant seat carrier until they're big enough to sit in the stroller without the infant carriers. But then we discovered that the Shuttle is not compatible with any of the twin universal infant seat carriers. The various latching mechanisms that secure it to the base are proprietary. This fact is also omitted from Combi's marketing materials.

So we called Combi and asked for suggestions. "No problem," they say over the phone. "Our Counterpart 2 tandem stroller will accommodate two infant carriers! Just return the Twin Sport and get yourself a Counterpart 2!" Okay, "Counterpart 2" is a little less intuitive a choice for infant twins than "Twin Sport," but we go online to look. And indeed it appears you can install two infant carriers in a Counterpart 2. There's even a YouTube video demonstrating how it all works. But Ginger noticed something weird on Combi's website. It said it would accommodate a Shuttle infant carrier in the front. So what was the car seat in the back? It was a Combi Connection, an entirely different model car seat sold by Combi. In other words, Combi designed a stroller that will accommodate two different infant carriers, but has no stroller solutions that can accommodate two of the same model. Needless to say, the Shuttle is the most popular and widely available car seat offered by Combi, but God help you if you buy two of them. This seemed too insane to be true.

We called Combi again, and were directed to a supervisor. He admitted that Combi had no solutions whatsoever that involved twins in the same car seat model. Essentially, he said the store should have pointed this out to us, and alternatively that we should have paid better attention to the specific phrasing on the stroller box: "Compatible with Combi Shuttle." Notice: Not "Shuttles," plural. Ah, good one. You sure got us there, Mr. Customer Service Supervisor. And what about the word "Twin" on the box, which generally tends to imply plurality to the English speaking world? Well, he said, it was always possible to unbelt and remove one of the babies from the infant carrier and place them into the stroller without the car seat. "Works just fine," he said. "Used it myself, with my two kids," he said. Oh, you have twins? "No," he said. Do you see the flaw in the use of the word "Twin"? Can you market a car seat to parents of twins that is horrendously matched to the actual experience of removing twins from a car and placing said twins into a stroller, and how that experience of twins might be different from your own experience when one of the children is, in fact, a toddler, and therefore by definition not a twin of the infant in the infant carrier?

Exasperating.

By the way, my wife pointed out to me after the fact that Combi is not an Italian company. It's based in Carol Stream, Illinois, but is owned by a Japanese company. I hereby retract all aspersions by implication against Italian designers, and am proceeding forthwith to buy myself a used Fiat 124 Spider, which, it turns out, is just as capable of accommodating two Combi Shuttle car seats as the strollers manufactured by Combi International Corporation.

So, the question remains: Can you recommend a good car seat for twins?

How are the girls doing?

Fine, thanks for asking.

Our last weight check was on Monday. They had gained only 3 and 2 ounces respectively since their last weight check six days earlier, which was a disappointment. In thinking through the possible causes for the fall-off in weight gain, we realized a few things may be at play:

• At the last weight check, their gains were so good that we were told we could let the girls direct the nighttime feedings -- feed them when they wake, and there's no need to wake them on strict three-hour schedules. Well, obviously they couldn't be trusted. In the week between the weight checks, mean time between nighttime feedings would stretch to four hours, then five. Eight daily feedings turned into seven, or perhaps even six. So we cracked the whip on them and now we're back to waking them up to eat, which means less sleep for us but more food for them.
• At the suggestion of the lactation consultant, we switched nipples from "fast" to "painfully slow." Sixty ml feedings that once took ten or fifteen minutes, tops, were now stretching to 45 minutes. And the girls would just tire out and give up, sometimes leaving as much as 20 ml of the bottle to go to waste. Anna in particular was hard to get to finish a bottle with the slow nipples. To remedy this, we switched to another set of nipples that seems to be a happy medium between too fast and too slow.
• Anna picked up some kind of nasal congestion, probably from Patrick. This may have put her off her feed a bit.
• In combination with these three factors, we had substituted two breastfeedings for two bottle feedings. I think this may have been okay had it not been for the other factors. But overall the girls were expending more energy in return for fewer calories, and that's why they weren't gaining the way they should.

If you ask me, and in a sense you did, all signs are pointing toward a much bigger weight gain at their next appointment on Monday. And in the non-food department, both girls are showing all signs of good health.